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Once had put a full stop behind final sentence of my last blog post, my inner critic and I set off on our evening walk. Ambling beneath the fresh greenery of the trees, where the wind played with the sun’s light to the song of the birds, some of my thoughts (though by no means all of them) crept back to my desk, to the organic geometry of the yogi vitruvianus,inspired by Leonardo da Vinci.

“Why,” I wondered – or rather: they wondered, “do humans feel the need to measure themselves by the abstract form(ula)s of geometry and mathematics?” “Because,” one of them replies rolling his eyes, “they were presented to us by none other than Plato as the absolute ideal and highest truth of life’s imperfect formations (Phaedrus 247d–248b).” “In contrast to Patañjali’s kaivalya, the total separation from all forms of prakṛti, concrete and abstract (Yogasūtra 4.34),” another thought snaps back at the know-it-all, “Plato’s ideal can hardly be described as absolute,” and adds: “What could be truer than pure consciousness, than puruṣa?” Checking his nails, my Platonist shrugs: “I have no idea what that could even mean,” he says. “Perfect puruṣa!” says the other, triumphantly.

Meanwhile, the inevitable in(ter)fluence of streams of consciousness has carried the concept of puruṣa into my thoughts in the park. However, whilst the discussion over there is focussing on the abstraction of the abstract, rather different texts and contexts are unfolding over here: The great Puruṣa-Sūkta of the Ṛg-Veda, for example, written some 3500 years ago, which speaks of puruṣa’s primordial sacrifice – here it is still, in accordance with the literal meaning of the word, the first cosmic being or person – through which the gods bring the world into being:

The moon was born from his mind; from his eye the sun was born. Indra and Agni came from his mouth, and from his vital breath the Wind as born.

(10.90.12)

Far removed from the supernatural or transcendent spheres of Plato and Patañjali, this puruṣa is situated in the world – indeed: he is the world, he is the stars, he is the universe. As brahman, puruṣa reappears in the later Upaniṣads where he, in accordance with the verbal root √bṛh-, becomes the expansive principle that underlies and permeates everything that exists (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 2.1–10b). Ātman, whose grammatical self-reference and literal corporeality initially suggest a limitation of its nature, is simultaneously called upon to realise itself as brahman by means of meditation (Aitareya Upaniṣad 3.1–3) – not in an abstract-transcendent sense, but in a sense entirely immanent to the world: Thus, the Chāndogya Upaniṣad links the five movements of the human body’s breath to the five senses, which, in turn, and as we encountered in the Puruṣa-Sūkta of the Ṛg-Veda, are connected with the elements and celestial bodies (2.1.1–5). Yet it is the Markaṇḍeya Purāṇa that describes the awakening of consciousness as a systematized meditative process, which the yogi moves through via his sensory perception of the elements earth, water, fire, air and ether:

One should hold seven subtle concentrations in the head, starting with the earth.
The Yogi should hold to the earth and enter its subtle quality.

[The Yogi] thinks on its expansive nature and moves beyond its fragrance.
Likewise in regard to the subtle flavor in water and the form [revealed by] fire.

This concentration extends simultaneously to the touch of the wind.
In the subtle activity of the sky, one moves beyond sound.

Thus one enters all of the elements of the mind through the mind.
Carrying this mental concentration, the subtle mind is born.

(40.17–20)

“Here,” I find my self thinking, “the ideal of humanity is measured not by the abstract forms or transcendent realms of consciousness, but by the manifest and living reality of the world as a whole,” and I realise that this idea resonates with me not only intellectually, but also somatically. “That is surprising, though,” a passing thought notes, and draws my attention to the world-renouncing, body-disciplining, inward-looking yogi who runs – or rather: sits – like a leitmotif through texts and traditions, and whose interest in the elements lies, at best, in overcoming and mastering them. “Ultimately, however, his goal is mokṣa,” my thought observes, “the final liberation from the cycle of rebirths into this world: He transcends the elements, as the Purāṇa describes.” I agree with my thought’s thought. Nevertheless: If mokṣa also means liberation from the confines of the me and mine, is a practice that allows us to become more open and permeable not a way to move towards this goal within our lives, within this world? My thoughts are still. Within me, only the leaves of the trees and the light of the setting sun are moving to the evening song of the birds.

Chapple, Christopher Key. Living Landscapes: Meditations on the Five Elements in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Yogas. State University of New York, 2020.

Doniger, Wendy. The Rig Veda: An Anthology. Penguin Classics, 1981.

Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing The Vitruvian Man (1498) is a paradox par excellence:
As one of the most famous works in art history, it is at once a testament to a historical view of humanity that, in our age of self-optimisation and self-quantification, could hardly be more relevant; it is the representation of an apparent deciphering of the sum and substance of humanity whilst simultaneously laying bare its inscrutability; it reciprocally reflects art and mathematics, the concrete with the abstract, the finite with eternity. And although the original is only exhibited every five years or so, it is nonetheless omnipresent in our everyday lives: We continuously encounter the Vitruvian Man on our Instagram-feeds, on health insurance cards, on Italian one-Euro coins – and in our Ashtanga practice.

But first, let’s take a brief look at the composition and concept behind this masterpiece: The double-stanced figure of an athletic man is situated at the centre of the picture. His outstretched limbs touch both a circle and a square, which frame his form. His navel constitutes the centre of both the human and geometric shapes. So far, so good – but: so what? What is the point of this geometric anthropology, which finds its continuation in the meticulous proportions of his body’s parts? Its point is nothing less than to portray man as the embodiment of the eternal geometry of the universe, as the microcosmic corpus of the macrocosmic order.

What might, in theory, sound quite compelling, soon proved to be an impossibility in practice: The Roman architect Vitruvius (c. 80 BC–15 AD), creator and namesake of the Vitruvianus, did not leave behind even a trace of a drawing of his homo bene figuratus, his well-proportioned human. The brilliant minds of the Renaissance – artists, architects, engineers – blunted their quills trying to sketch him, yet their designs never progressed beyond a collection of distorted homunculi. Finally, it was Leonardo – who else? – who succeeded in squaring the circle by deviating in a few details from Vitruvius’ specifications and incorporating his own mathematical, anatomical and aesthetic insights.

Returning to the practice of Ashtanga, we encounter a synthesized Virtruvianus most frequently within or between the standing postures following the Sun Salutations: between the trikoṇāsanas and the pārśva koṇāsanas, between two of the four pādottānāsanas, in the transition of pārśvottānāsana, and between the āsanas and samasthitiḥ. With view to the geometric leitmotif of this standing sequence, but also beyond it, at least two possibilities of practice can be derived from the ‘vitruvian-āsana’:

1. Like Virtuvius’ devoted Renaissance scholars, the practitioner attempts to conform to an abstract and/or external form in order to embody a supposed ideal. A mere glance at the different body sizes, proportions and potentials that we encounter in our shared practice suffices to reveal this to be physiological nonsense. That such an idea can also become politically dangerous was proven by the fascist appropriation of a measurable human ideal – cf. Benito Mussolini’s Leonardo exhibition in Milan in 1939.
2. The practitioner explores the harmonious interplay of forms and proportions within their own body. Here, too, the observation of no more than two practitioners reveals that each āsana takes on a different form in each person, and that even a single āsana inevitably changes over the course of a single person’s practice, both internally and externally. Like Leonardo da Vinci, we would therefore do well to test abstract and/or traditional theories in practice, to question them and, where necessary, to adapt them. Unless we decide to practise Homunculus Yoga, the measure of our practice cannot be compass and ruler, but the experiences and insights of each and every practitioner.

This seems to be a good place to pause – not least because the sun, the birds and the evening air are calling me outside ever more insistently. Yet, as so often happens at this very moment of writing, my inner critic is raising his hand to point out that I cannot possibly intend to conclude that humankind should regard itself as the measure of its own – or, at worst, of all – things. Of course not, I reply: It’s only logical that proportions can never arise solely from within themselves. Naturally, the person who practises yoga, who lives his or her life, must find their grounding within the physical and mental conditions given to them. Yet this person is always embedded within larger contexts: social and political, cultural and religious, abstract and concrete. This is precisely what Leonardo’s Vitruvianus symbolises: It is only through our own relationship with ourselves and with the whole that we will find our perfect posture as human beings. What more can there be to achieve in yoga? My inner critic seems, for the time being, to be appeased. Together we get up from my desk and stroll out into the evening sun.

Da Vinci, Leonardo: Uomo vitruviano. 1498, Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, Venice.

prologue

If there is one thing that yoga has shown me, it is that life – my life, certainly – is made up of a never-ending, ever-dynamic, multi-directional succession of ands. They begin in the early morning with meditation: one thought and another and another, consecutively or confluently, sometimes opening up a serene moment of silence, oftentimes not. They continue through the day with a sequence of breathing techniques, a series of physical postures, a towering stack of texts to read and to write, all of which inevitably lead to more reading and more writing, a long list of must-dos and should-dos and could-dos… Reader, I’m sure you’ll relate. As ubiquitous as this phenomenon seems to be, I find myself wondering why this is so. The American psychologist William James (1842–1910) locates its source in human consciousness which he describes as “a teeming multiplicity of objects and relations” (224) that seep into our daily lives. The Book of Genesis also gives an explanation of sorts when it recounts God’s creation of the world as a polysyndetic progression of and and and that form the warp for weaving the fabric of life (Gen 1:3–5). And, it seems, is the foundation to our human and worldly existence.

Yoga, too, is often associated with connection and conjunction. Coming from the verbal root √yuj meaning ‘to join’ and ‘to bind’, it is often argued to be per definition the means and end of uniting two disarticulated entities into a harmonious whole: mind and body, male and female, individual and cosmos. Yes and no. While this may hold true for the physical practices of haṭha-yoga, the classical yoga of Patañjali declares with uncompromising clarity that yoga is union’s very opposite: discernment, separation, isolation. How, then, to think about this seam of (dis)connections which runs through the history of yoga’s philosophy and practices as a common thread in distinct kinds of stitching? I would like to propose a single-syllabled answer: च or ca, ‘and’. According to Sir Monier-Williams’ Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899), the Sanskrit conjunction ca can denote cumulation (“and”) and contrast (“but”), inclusion (“either, or”) and exclusion (“neither, nor”), certainty (“indeed”) and condition (“if”). In short, it can hold complexity in succinctness. And do its possibilities end there? Of course not! As the British lexicographer notes, “with lexicographers ca– may imply a reference to certain other words which are not expressed.” But from the beginning: and as cumulation.

Yoga, too, begins with an and of sorts: “atha yogānuśāsanam: Now, further instructions on yoga” (YS 1.1). Though often overlooked, Mallinson and Singleton’s translation of the particle anu– as “further” articulates that Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra, dated to the 4^th century CE, does not proceed neatly ab ovo, golden or otherwise – after all, where would we find its aureal hen? It is a compendium of many earlier influences and teachings on yoga, mythical and philosophical, revelatory and transmitted, Vedic and beyond. Notwithstanding its conjunctive beginnings, there is a fundamentally disjunctive impetus to Patañjali’s yoga of meditation, whose sole end lies in the discernment between and the separation of prakṛti (the phenomenal world) and puruṣa (pure consciousness). What for? Liberation, of course! To break free from saṃsāra, the self-reinforcing loop of kāma (desire) and karma (action) that traps us in a vicious cycle of repetition and rebirth. The way out is, well, out: discernment of the problem and detachment from all action, physical and cognitive, forever. In Patañjali’s words: “By removal of ignorance, conjunction [saṃyoga] is removed. This is the absolute freedom [kaivalya] of the seer [puruṣa]” (YS 2.25). In alignment with Sāṃkhya’s dualistic worldview, saṃyoga is suffering, kaivalya is liberation. Liberation is a matter of ca as either-or.

At the same time – albeit historically almost a millennium later –, texts on the physical practices of haṭha-yoga seem to teach the very opposite. Inspired by the non-dual worldviews of Advaita Vedānta and Tantra, the 14^th-century Yogabīja now states that yoga is “the union [saṃyoga!] of all dualities”: sun and moon, prāṇa and apāna, the individual and the supreme (89–90). Still, the ultimate goal remained unchanged: mokṣa, liberation from the cycle of reincarnation into mundane existence. What, then, of liberation and life? Within a worldview whose focus ultimately lay beyond the world: not much – which is not to say: nothing at all. Contours of the jīvanmukta do begin to appear in the texts, although his form remains rather elusive: We encounter him in a cadaverous state beyond senses and self (Haṭhapradīpikā 4.109), or wandering between the worlds wielding his powers (Dattātreyayogaśāstra 128), or “living in a house with children and a wife” and even – brace yourself, Ashtangi: “ha[ving] fun” (Śivasaṃhitā 5.260). So long as all desires have been abandoned, life in liberation, free from the karmic entanglements of action, is possible. While the fundamental logic of liberation remains one of ca as either-or, it paradoxically becomes the foundation of a state of yoga in which ca can be both-and.

This is the Bhagavad Gītā’s original argument, as presented by Kṛṣṇa to Arjuna on the eve of the great battle that is at the centre of the Mahābhārata epos. Aware that the logic of war is destruction and the logic of karma is suffering, Arjuna finds himself caught in a double bind, in which a refusal to fight would be a refusal to fulfil his dharma, his duty as the warrior that he is, while to engage in war would be to engage ever more strongly in the cycle of karma. Overcome by a crisis of conscience, he lays down his weapons and is set to retreat from the war and the world. Kṛṣṇa, with divine dexterity, turns Arjuna’s either-or-conundrum into a both-and-resolution: “Your concern should be with action, / never with an action’s fruits; / these should never motivate you, / nor attachment to inaction” (2.47). Arjuna can engage with the world without reservations, so long as he divorces karma from kāma, as resounding as their connection might be, “the wise ones yoked to a higher mind / are freed from the bonds of rebirth” (2.51). Over two thousand years later, this conditional aspect of yoga’s ca still resonates in Rudyard Kipling’s aptly entitled poem “If—” (1895).

So much – or rather, so little on yoga’s yesterdays, many of which, in keeping with Sir Monier-Williams’ apropos about ca’s silent references, have not been mentioned or (yet) discovered. What, then, of yoga’s todays and tomorrows? Their development, which begins with colonization and globalization, is one in which yoga’s traditions meet ideas and practices from the West, conjoining men’s calisthenics with women’s gymnastics with martial arts with the methods of modern science employed to attest yoga’s potency and healing potential, while anglophone mesmerists and pseudo-masters of manifestation were trying, within their own esoteric frameworks, to prove much the same thing. It progresses as the Hindu monk Vivekananda (1863–1902) travels to the US to teach and to write and, in doing so, conjoins Patañjali’s Dualism with Advaita Vedānta’s Non-Dualism with occult speculations with a Christian desideratum for a time- and borderless truth. And it continues along this way westward, now travelled by gurus like B. K. S. Iyengar (1918–2014) and Patthabi Jois (1915–2009), who fused their elaborate systems of modern postural yoga with Patañjali’s teachings on restraining all movement within a single, straightforward sentence: “I teach … Ashtanga Yoga, the original method given in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra” (Jois). Ca, it seems, became a connection to the point of conflation until it finally fell by the wayside altogether.

This could be the end of our exploring, were it not for the intrinsic continuity of and that finds its most concise expression in its symbol, the ampersand: &, which, until some two hundred years ago, constituted the last character of the Latin alphabet: X, Y, Z, &. & – and then what? Following &’s lead and logic, we begin where we started: At the break of dawn, in meditation, watching the mind and the world unfold as a consecutive and concurrent nexus of &s. By Patañjali’s measures, this only goes to show my ongoing shortcomings in meditation. Who am I to challenge his claim? Then again, what yoga’s concerns with puruṣa and prakṛti, truth and illusion, prāṇa and apāna, retreat and engagement have also shown is that ca is fundamental to the path towards yoga’s ends: action and stillness, union and separation, integration and transcendence, at times in opposition, at times in succession, at times side by side. One might venture to say that and represents the process and potential of liberation – and even, as the full expression of ampersand, ‘and, per se, and’, could be read to imply, stand, like &, as an end in itself.

This end, of course, would be an open and a dynamic one – necessarily so, if we, in our own time and place, are not intent on leaving it all behind: a liberation-in-progress, rather than an absolute extrication. If our aim, not unlike the yogins of old, is to become less self-involved and more fully conscious, kind-hearted, engaged human beings, but to be so in and for the here and now, the place of practice and the place of achievement is the connective space between you and me. It is the relational space of life in the world – and life, as the American novelist Philip Roth famously declared, “Life is and” (309). Life, like yoga, expresses itself as continuity and change, connection and separation, many and one. Yoga, like life, may be expressed as “the coming-into-being, / as well as the ceasing-to-be” (6.11), as it is in its earliest description in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, dated (with scholarly reservation) to the last centuries BCE. Like life, yoga is and, and as such is relation, and as such is responsibility, for ourselves and each other and the more-than-human world, as we all continuously come into being and to cease to be.

Bryant, Edwin F. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali. North Point Press, 2009.

“Ca, ind.” Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary, 1899, https://sanskritdictionary.com/ca/77625/1. Accessed 22 August 2026.

James, William. Principles of Psychology. Henry Holt and Company, 1890. 2 vols.

Jois, K. Pattabhi. “An Interview with K Pattabhi Jois: Practice Makes Perfect.” Interview by Sandra Anderson. Yoga + Joyful Living Magazine, 1994, https://harmonyslater.com/interview-pattabhi-jois.

Kipling, Rudyard. “If—.” Rewards and Fairies. Macmillan and Co., 1910.

Mallinson, James, and Mark Singleton. Roots of Yoga. Penguin, 2017.

Roth, Philip. The Counterlife. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986.

The Bhagavad Gita. Translated by Gavin Flood and Charles Martin. W. W. Norton, 2012.

The Dattātreyayogaśāstra. Edited and translated by James Mallinson, École Française d’Extrême-Orient, 2024. Haṭha Yoga Series 5.

“The Kaṭha Upaniṣad.” Upaniṣads. Edited and translated by Patrick Olivelle. Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 231–247.

The Śivasaṃhitā. Edited and translated by James Mallinson, YogaVidya.com, 2017.

Once upon a time, a Buddhist monk was alone in a temple. He threw himself to the floor, beat his chest vigorously and muttered: “I am nothing, I am nothing, I am nothing…”

Soon after, a novice entered the temple. He looked around, spotted the monk and knelt down beside him. Together with the monk, he murmured: “I am nothing, I am nothing, I am nothing…” Suddenly, the caretaker arrived to sweep the temple floor. When he saw the two men kneeling, he, too, knelt down and spoke in unison with the other two: “I am nothing, I am nothing, I am nothing…” The monk nudged the novice and remarked with indignance: “Well, well, well – look at who fancies himself as a nothing.”

The moral of the story? Nothing protects you – or rather: does not protect you – from the enticements of rank and status!

(Der Philosophie-Kalender 2025, 27.02.2025)

It is said that in yoga (and particularly in Ashtanga), there are those who feel the need to prove something through their practice: to themselves, to their teacher, to the other practitioners. It is also said that in yoga (particularly in Ashtanga) there are those who sometimes eye those who are already a little further along in their practice – doing drop-backs, gliding through their vinyāsas, practising the Third and Fourth Series – with a certain sense of envy. It is also said that in yoga (particularly in Ashtanga) there are people, both practitioners and teachers, who, quite en passant, will not fail to mention to others – practitioners and teachers alike – where they have practised, with whom, for how long, and what levels of qualification, authorisation, certification (also: injuries) they have accumulated over time.

So they say. What do we know about such things…

So far, so human. And yet: Shouldn’t it be precisely those members of our mundane species who devote their lives, in whole or in part, or even just for a few hours at the end of a long week, to a practice – yoga, for example – in which the focus is not on performance, results and comparisons, but on insight, acceptance and authenticity, who should distance themselves from such competitive struggles and posturing? Of course! Is the fact that, at times, this is not always the case an indication that yoga is not effective? Of course not! Quite the contrary: Like a magnifying glass – Richard Freeman would say: like a mirror – the practice of yoga clearly reveals to us the patterns of thought and behaviour that shape our perspective on ourselves and others both consciously and unconsciously – even as we firmly believe that we recognised and moved on from them long ago.

Here’s an anecdote from my own practice:

In the summer of 2025, I had the great fortune of being able to take part in a Teacher Intensive with Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor, alongside 50 marvellous practitioners from all over the world. Throughout the four weeks of the course, I did my morning practice next to an exceptionally friendly Norwegian who was diligently working on the Fourth Series of Ashtanga, all the while that I was trying to find my way back into the Second Series. “Perfectly fine!” I told myself, “She’s doing her thing and I’m doing mine, each to their own. I completely appreciate her practice and fully accept where I am with mine. And yet – it you’ll permit a quite aside: Aren’t my āsanas much more integrated? Doesn’t my breath flow much deeper? Am I not, in my modest contentment with the first two series, actually more advanced than those who feel the need to master the Advanced Series?” And thus comparative and competitive thinking had swiftly crept into my practice via the back roads of supposed acceptance and serenity: If I couldn’t keep up in flexibility and strength, then surely I could surpass her in attention, breathing and intention!

Chögyam Trungpa (1939–87), Tibetan Buddhist master and founder of the Shambhala Centres in North America and Europe, addressed the pitfalls and traps of spiritual practices in a number of his talks and discussions during the 1970s, describing them in a book of the same title as ‘spiritual materialism’. In it, he points out that the “ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality” (p. 13). How so? When teachings and practices are regarded as something that exists outside of us – as an ideal that we construct with the help of certain texts, images and/or role models, which we proceed to emulate, to measure ourselves against, and to compare ourselves to others with. Thus, the practice quickly turns into a performance: “If our teacher speaks of renunciation of the ego, we attempt to mimic renunciation of ego” (id.). To what end? To see ourselves confirmed in the belief that we are completely free of ego – and thus superior to our poor, ego-bound fellow human beings. The tragicomic aspect of this is that, whilst we genuinely believe ourselves to be more authentic, empathetic and present, we are actually becoming ever-more entangled in our rather cunning egos.

This, too, is very much a part of human nature – and thus, in a certain sense, very much true to who we are. The crux of the matter is to recognise this aspect of our nature, to acknowledge it, and to approach it with insight and humour. It may then not only become clear who, in the case of our Buddhist sangha from the beginning of this text, is the one merely imagining himself to be nothing; it might also become possible for us to move from arrogance to humility, from illusion to reality and – in the specific context of yoga – from the poses to the āsanas, from a performance to practice.

“Der Mönch und das Nichts.” Der Philosophie-Kalender 2025. 27.02.2025. Harenberg Verlag, 2024.
(Translated by the author)

Trungpa, Chogyam. Cutting through Spiritual Materialism. Shambhala Publications, 2002.